Several weeks ago, we presented a list of CEOs and corporations who have had the highest number of direct visits to the White House and, by implication, president Obama. As we said,these are the corporations (and CEOs) who own the White House, and the US presidency .
One name oddly missing was that of George Soros: the billionaire liberal donor whose fundraising efforts have been critical for the Democratic party in recent years. Which is surprising considering the substantial backing, mostly financial, Soros provided in 2007 and 2008 to a then largely unknown Senator from Illinois.
Or perhaps it is not surprising: a 2012 New Yorker profile of the relationship between the US president and one of the left's most generous donors reveals stormy clouds:
"although he still supports Obama, Soros has been disappointed by him, both politically and personally. Small slights can loom large with wealthy donors. When Soros wanted to meet with Obama in Washington to discuss global economic problems, Obama’s staff failed to respond. Eventually, they arranged not a White House interview but, rather, a low-profile, private meeting in New York, when the President was in town for other business. Soros found this back-door treatment confounding. “He feels hurt,” a Democratic donor says."
Fast forward to December 31, when in the pre-New Year's lull, the State Department released its latest dump of Hillary Clinton emails, amounting to some 5,500 pages, a move Trump promptly slammed.
And while it will take the media a few days to parse through all the emails, one already stands out: one revealing not only the relationship between Soros and Obama, but more importantly, Soros and the person who will likely be America's next president.
As the following excerpt reveals, the abovementioned George Soros told a close Hillary Clinton ally in 2012 that he regretted supporting Barack Obama over her in the 2008 primaries and praised Clinton for giving him an open door to discuss policy, according to emails released Thursday by the State Department.
As first reported by Politico, in an email to Clinton, Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, recounted a conversation she had while seated next to Soros at a dinner sponsored by the liberal major donor club called Democracy Alliance.
After Tanden informed Soros that she had worked for Clinton during her bitter 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination against Obama, Tanden wrote that Soros “said he's been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn't met with the President ever (though I thought he had). He then said he regretted his decision in the primary - he likes to admit mistakes when he makes them and that was one of them. He then extolled his work with you from your time as First Lady on."
The full email below:
Going back to the NY Mag 2012 article, it added that according to a source, although "Soros might have contributed far more money to Obama if the Administration had engaged with him more intently, he said, “Part of me respects Obama for not spending more time with him. This President doesn’t want to spend a lot of time with donors. You have to admire that.”"
Actually he does, as the chart up top shows it. However, for some odd reason Obama simply did not want to spend a lot of time with George Soros.
The time of snubbing Soros, however, is at an end, as Hillary is well-known for having no qualms about spending "a lot of time with donors", especially since virtually every entity on Wall Street is a donor either directly or to the Clinton Foundation.
Which means that as Obama's time in the White House runs out, and as Hillary prepares to take over the throne (barring some Republican miracle), Soros is about to rectify his mistake from 8 years ago and make sure that the special interest puppet in charge of the U.S., is precisely the one he wanted all along.
Then again, perhaps it is really just Obama's fault, and behind the charming facade is a pool of unlikability. According to another email released yeserday , this time citing Germany's foreign minister circa 2009, Germany's Angela Merkel despised the "Obama phenomenon:"
Sydney Blumenthal sent Clinton a memo on Sept. 30, 2009 with background information on John Kornblum, who was at the time taking over as Germany’s foreign minister. “Kornblum strongly suggests you try to develop your personal relationship with Merkel as you can,” Blumenthal writes.“He says she dislikes the atmospherics surrounding the Obama phenomenon, that it’s contrary to her whole idea of politics and how to conduct oneself in general. She would welcome a more conversational relationship with you.”
Eight years later, all of America is eager to move on from the "Obama phenomenon." The problem is that the "Hillary phenomenon" is on deck.
* * *
We conclude with a few lines from Ludwig von Mises who 80 years ago described and previewed this twisted, corrupted and politicized mutant that passes for modern "capitalism" in his essay "The Myth of the Failure Of Capitalism", which was published shortly before the coming of Adolf Hitler to power:
“In the interventionist state it is no longer of crucial importance for the success of an enterprise that the business should be managed in a way that it satisfies the demands of consumers in the best and least costly manner.“It is far more important that one has ‘good relationships’ with the political authorities so that the interventions work to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise. A few marks’ more tariff protection for the products of the enterprise and a few marks’ less tariff for the raw materials used in the manufacturing process can be of far more benefit to the enterprise than the greatest care in managing the business.“No matter how well an enterprise may be managed, it will fail if it does not know how to protect its interests in the drawing up of the custom rates, in the negotiations before the arbitration boards, and with the cartel authorities. To have ‘connections’ becomes more important that to produce well and cheaply.“So the leadership positions within the enterprises are no longer achieved by men who understand how to organize companies and to direct production in the way the market situation demands, but by men who are well thought of ‘above’ and ‘below,’ men who understand how to get along well with the press and all the political parties, especially with the radicals, so that they and their company give no offense. It is that class of general directors that negotiate far more often with state functionaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.“Since it is a question of obtaining political favors for these enterprises, their directors must repay the politicians with favors. In recent years, there have been relatively few large enterprises that have not had to spend very considerable sums for various undertakings in spite of it being clear from the start that they would yield no profit. But in spite of the expected loss it had to be done for political reasons. Let us not even mention contributions for purposes unrelated to business – for campaign funds, public welfare organizations, and the like.“Forces are becoming more and more generally accepted that aim at making the direction of large banks, industrial concerns, and stock corporations independent of the shareholders . . . The directors of large enterprises nowadays no longer think they need to give consideration to the interests of the shareholders, since they feel themselves thoroughly supported by the state and that they have interventionist public opinion behind them.“In those countries in which statism has most fully gained control . . . they manage the affairs of their corporations with about as little concern for the firm’s profitability as do the directors of public enterprises. The result is ruin.
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